A mental representation of an auditory stimulus (sound) that is held briefly in sensory memory

Short-term memory

The type or stage of memory that can hold information for up to a minute or so after the trace of stimulus decays. Also called working memory, 7+or-2 is the limit, within 7 minutes someone can remember something, past that point they usually can't remember it unless they put it into their long-term memory

Serial-position effect

The tendency to recall more accurately the first and last items in a series

Chunk

A stimulus or group of stimuli that are perceived as a discrete piece of information

Rote

Mechanical associative learning that is based on repetition

Displace

In memory theory, to cause information to be lost from short-term memory by adding new information

Long-term memory

The type or stage of memory capable of relatively permanent storage

Repression

In Freud's psychodynamic theory, the ejection of anxiety-evoking ideas from conscious awareness

Schema

A way of mentally representing the world, such as a belief or an expectation, that can influence perception of persons, objects and situations

Long-term memory

Often reconstructed, no known limit for amount of information stored in long-term memory

Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon

The feeling that information is stored in memory although it cannot be readily retrieved, also known as feeling-of-knowing experience

Context-dependent memory

Memory that is more easily retrieved when in the context or setting in which said memory was encoded and stored, or learned

State-dependent memory

Memory that is more easily retrieved when in the physiological or emotional state in which it was encoded and stored, or learned

Script

Knowing what you're supposed to do in a certain situation through memory; e.g. going to a restaurant and knowing that you are supposed to sit down, look at the menu, order, etc.

A measure of retention in which the difference between the number of repetitions originally required to learn a list and the number of repetitions required to relearn the list after a certain amount of time has elapsed is calculated

Interference Theory

The theory that we may forget stored material because other learning interferes with it

Retroactive Interference

New learning interferes with the retrieval of old learning, new to old

Proactive Interference

Older learning interferes with the capacity to retrieve more recently learned material, old to new

Infantile Amnesia

Cognitive explanations: No interest in remembering the past, Specific episodes versus networks of memories, Unreliable use of symbolic language

Anterograde amnesia

Inability to remember new information (more common)

Retrograde amnesia

Inability to remember old information (less common)

Long-term potentiation

Enhanced efficiency in synaptic transmission following a period of brief, rapid stimulation